The Shack series

Chapter 23

He looked at her, frozen. He obviously knew who she was, instantly, but I think he was hoping that we were some kind of illusion.

"Delaney, this is Jason Bradley Calloway, Esquire."

Delaney looked up at me, pointedly ignoring him. "What does 'esquire' mean, anyway?"

I shrugged. "I'm not sure, remind me and we'll look it up. I think it's probably Latin or Greek for 'asshole.' Every 'esquire' I've ever met has been one. Or they've been lawyers, which is kinda the same thing most times."

He started to say something, but Delaney cut in. "That figures. Is this what I think it is?"

"A Bugatti Chiron. They're something like two or three million dollars apiece. Tops out at over two hundred sixty miles per hour."

"Looks like a spaceship from some cheesy afternoon sci-fi movie."

"s**t, I thought it looked cool until you said that, now I want to paint 'Mars Needs Women' on the side."

She nodded. "Do ya think he's compensating for something? Jesus Christ, it's a three-million dollar, two hundred sixty mile an hour supercar. He must be Damnin' microscopic."

I shrugged and looked at him. "She's got a point."

She walked slowly around the car tapping it with a screwdriver, making Calloway wince with each sharp sound. "What's this made of?"

"Carbon fiber. Makes it hard to damage. It's supposed to have an incredible stiffness rating."

"See? Compensating." Delaney snickered at her own terrible Shrek imitation then walked to the back of the truck, pulled a safety chain and began dragging it under the car.

"What the Damn are you doing?" His anger was starting to overcome his fear.

"What a coincidence, that's the same Damning question we have for you. Why are your 'bodyguards' trying to kill Delaney?"

He paused, trying to decide whether to deny it. Delaney's dismissal of his prized car had him boiling, and arrogance won out. "I'm not going to have some Damning retard getting any of the family money. It's mine and I plan to keep it that way. She's a mistake. I'm not dealing with a Damning paternity suit."

"I'm not interested in your Damning money, shithead." Delaney grimaced at him, half under the rear of the car. There was a harsh 'clank' as she slapped the hook into place on something. Calloway winced again. She rolled out and stood up, snagging the external lift control. "I don't want anything to do with you or your money. You aren't s**t to me. Needles is my dad." She looked at me softly for a second, then glared at him and punched the lift button, raising the back of the car higher until there was an odd grating sound from the front as the chin spoiler hit the gravel. "Asshole."

He started at the sound but was wary enough of the g*n in my hand to stay still.

I waved him back. "Here's the Damning deal. We'll drop your Damning rocket ship at the gate, you stay absolutely still until we do, or it goes on a goddamn sleigh ride behind the wrecker. You may not have noticed, but she just snapped a safety chain on, but she didn't put on the wheel straps. It'd be like a beer can behind a honeymoon car."

Delaney studied the car for a moment. "We really shouldn't be towing this backwards, it's bad for it, right?"

"It's all-wheel drive; there's no good way to tow it without pulling it up on a rollback. If there's any damage, the asshole here can pay for it out of his Damning trust fund, or whatever."

He looked like he wanted to say something, but I waved him off. "Shut it. Stein is dead, so don't expect any more help from him. And don't try to kill Charlotte again. I don't need the hassle of everyone assuming I did it."

Delaney tilted her head at me. "You have kinda earned that though." She looked over at Calloway. "Really, he'd be my first suspect. He's got some serious anger issues when it comes to her."

I sighed. "Fair enough. But I don't wanna be Damning blamed if I didn't get to pull the trigger."

Calloway looked back and forth between us, clearly lost, but I wasn't in the mood to explain it to him. Delaney hopped back in the cab with a final glare at him.

I looked at him. "This is the only warning you get. Leave us the Damn alone. You come after us now or ten years from now, you're done. If you come tearing down this mountain after us before I call you on your cell phone, you will die. You got it?"

He gave a half-a*s nod, eyes glittering with hate.

I gritted my teeth. "The only reason I'm warning you is because I'm trying to set a better example for the kid."

Delaney leaned out the window, rolled her eyes and gave a snort of a laugh. Calloway's face reddened in rage.

Well, Damn. I tried.

Once we started to pull away, I could hear the locked tires chirping as they stuttered across the pavement. He began to move until I revved the engine and gave his precious car a good jolt, while Delaney flipped him the bird out her window. He froze, watching as we reached the gate and Delaney hopped out and ran back to unhook the chain.

She climbed back in and looked at me. "Done."

"You ready for this?"

She nodded. "I know his kind, they hovered around mother and... Chuck... all the time. They think they're the only ones who matter. It's him or me." I revved the engine, and hit the emergency release on the tire jaws, dropping the two-ton car to the ground.

I could see Calloway and his posse sprinting for a black SUV on the other end of the compound as I ran through the gears. We really needed to reach our goal before they caught up.

It took longer than I thought, and I was beginning to wonder if we'd misjudged him when I heard the burbling roar of the supercar. The pause had been to let him get into his car and take the lead. He must have used the launch button, not a great option for the winding mountain road, but he had to be pissed beyond belief, with us humiliating him in front of his paid sycophants. In any case, he had mostly straight stretches until he reached us and that car's handling was absolutely top of the line, even at high speeds. Just what he planned to do when he caught up to us, I had no idea, his two-ton car could hardly force the wrecker off the road. He just might have had a plan, and I had no intention of finding out what it was.

As I started to slide around the boulder we'd pulled out into the road, I reached for the big yellow smiley face button on the dash.

Emmett Tuckett hadn't just been a repo man. He'd been an ardent hater of what he'd always called "Tree Huggers and Hippies." He'd modified his truck to "Roll Coal," to inject extra diesel fuel to create massive clouds of dense black smoke when he passed a Prius or anything else he deemed a target. I'd never quite gotten around to taking it out, even though it was technically illegal.

Delaney's hand slammed down on the button before I could reach it. I glanced at her. Her face was stark, her jaw set and she held the button down with grim white-knuckle finality. "Damn him."

Dark smoke boiled out of the stacks, billowing back up the road behind us as the rippling snarl of the Bugatti grew louder. The pitch-black flume crawled up the road, pushed by the slightest of mountain breezes.

Delaney looked steadily down the road, I could she was counting under her breath. "Three, two..."

The clash of the collision behind us was odd: tremendously loud, but with none of the metallic clamor of a normal crash.

The Chiron spun past us, flying through the air like a massive blue frisbee. We both watched as it flew out over the valley.

Delaney blinked once. "Wow, That held together better than I thought it would."

I slowed and we watched it until it slammed into the boulder-strewn valley floor 800 feet below.

"Yeah, I'm sure that will buff right the Damn out."

Delaney blinked again and looked into the mirror on her side. "Do you think his bodyguards will see..."

She was cut off by the clamor of a second crash. The black SUV, far slower and far less aerodynamic, tumbled down the mountainside, flying apart like one of those weird self-destructive sculptures.

"Nope."

We drove another thirty minutes while Delaney just stared straight forward.

"You okay?"

She nodded once, taking a deep breath. "Him or me. I've been lucky, real lucky. You've been there for me, but someday it'll be just me..." She choked a little and I could see her eyes welling with tears, but she fought it down. "I could pretend, but I think... maybe, this is just the way my life is going to be." Delaney gave me a wan smile. "You know that don't you? That's why you sent me down to Texas."

There was no point in lying about it. "I think it will be this way for a while at least."

She nodded. "Yeah, I saw his face when you told him to stop trying to kill mother."

"He had no Damning clue. And he didn't know what I was talking about when I mentioned Stein, either."

Delaney let a long breath out. "Shit."

*****

Sheree sighed as we finished our tale. 'So there's more?"

I nodded. "I'm pretty sure Junior wasn't involved in the attack on Charlotte."

Tara sat back. I'd had Delaney call her to meet us at the cabin. She looked thoughtful. "Burns is gay, so he's out. Franks has been the subject of twelve paternity suits in the last eighteen years. He's in one now. He'd sleep with a crocodile if it held still long enough."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, he slept with Charli; a crocodile would be a step up."

Tara tried to give me a sour look, but she was pretty used to my attitude about Charlotte at this point. "So did you."

Delaney snickered.

"Behave, Les." Sheree gave me a half-a*s glare but spoiled it with a slight smile.

"I'm reformed. I traded way up."